Squirm

In Fly Creek, Georgia, a severe thunderstorm causes havoc when killer invertebrates are unleashed! In no time at all, the local hillbilly population is under attack by these slime-covered wigglers. Indeed, the tiny cattle from Willie's Worm Farm have become enraged, and the humans had better watch out! These worms bite! They also squeal like rusty hinges!

BEWARE: If you think that worms are icky, then you are in for some major ick!

Stupendous characters abound, including the world's least heroic hero, Mick (Dan Scardino), the wretched Sheriff Reston (Peter Maclean), Roger (A.W. Dow), the man that halfwits point at saying, "Hey! Look at the halfwit!", and the unforgettable, pot-puffing Alma (Fran Higgins) and her enormous shoes!

SQUIRM is Director Jeff Lieberman's creeping, crawling contribution to the "when nature attacks" movie sub-sub-genre. As such, it's a bait bucket full of hilarious fun! Roger's unspeakable transformation, and the dreaded "worm tidal waves" are especially rib-tickling!

EXTRA POINTS GO TO: Jean Sullivan as the ethereal, seemingly LSD-powered Naomi "Ma" Sanders!

Entertaining, ridiculous, and just plain weird!...

One of my favorite horror flicks in this 1970's anomoly about electrified killer worms on a blood rampage in a small Georgia town. The worm effects are by the great Rick Baker, responsible for the effects in many notable productions such as KING KONG (1976), VIDEODROME(1982) and others. The main characters are constantly on the lookout for the hungry worms and the backwoods setting adds some chills as the entire environment is unfamiliar to most viewers. I would highly recommend this one...like I said it's a strange little flick that has been highly underrated, but i guarantee that if you see it, you'll probably enjoy it.

This film gave me vivid nightmares as a kid. It has a scene where worms burrow under a guy's face. It was just on MST3K. It has a creepy song that plays over the opening credits (as Tom Servo puts it, It's evil little kid music). And DON'T, I mean don't eat spaghetti while watching this movie or within a week of viewing this film.

Fly Creek is a small southern town best known for it's "antiques" and the Grimes Worm Farm. During one particularly hot summer, while Mick (Don Scardino) is on his way on a bus to meet new girlfriend Geri Sanders (Patricia Pearcy), they're hit by a whopper of a thunderstorm. Fly Creek's roads are flooded and they've lost power due to a downed power line that is still sparking. And that leads to a big problem. Because when the film's worms are stimulated by electricity, they come out of the ground, ready to bite, and there are millions of them!

As is obvious from the premise, Squirm is a nature-gone-wild film, a subgenre of horror that was particularly active in the 70s. It's a pretty good example of the genre, and the film is successful more often than not, as long as you don't start to question the plot too much. Overall, it's a 7 out of 10 for me. I almost gave it an 8, but the ending is a bit too clichéd, so I knocked off a point. I've only seen one of director/writer Jeff Lieberman's other films so far--Blue Sunshine (1976)--and that also had points taken off for a less-than-satisfying ending.

Squirm is at its best when it's wallowing in small redneck town weirdness. The Sheriff (Peter MacLean) is frighteningly unresponsive, a bit pleasantly campy, and he's also a paranoid troublemaker. The Grimes family, Willie (Carl Dagenhart) and Roger (R.A. Dow), are demented and creepy. The Sanders family seems oddly dysfunctional, and Geri's sister, Alma (Fran Higgins), demonstrates that Juliette Lewis wasn't the first Juliette Lewis. When all of this stuff is combined with Squirm's initial slow-burning horror aspects--including a relatively subtle amount of worms and a well-placed (both literally and in terms of the script) skeleton--it is good, almost sublimely so.

But things begin to go slightly awry when we get to the big extravaganza near the end. The characters have either died off or Lieberman simply abandons them. Having a lot of characters die off by the end is understandable and even laudable in a film like this, but it's too bad we couldn't have seen them longer and had more emotional investment in them. Simply abandoning characters isn't as excusable. Of course the attacking worm quotient increases as the film continues, and this is handled well physically (I can't imagine having to be a worm wrangler), but plot points surrounding the worms become sketchier and almost contradictory at times. That saps too much tension out of the ending, and instead we're primarily engaged by physical effects for their own sake, plus a wonderfully campy change in personality from Roger.

Squirm is definitely worth seeing for anyone with a taste for lower-budget 1970s horror, and at times is quite a gem. Just don't set your expectations too high (but really, who would for a film like this?)

Reading some of the negative reviews for Squirm, I can't help but wonder if some people tend to prejudge it just because its "one of those 70's bug flicks". I saw this movie at the theater when it was first released, and watching it now on video, it still holds up today as a very well made film.

The set locations were perfect for giving that "small town down south" feeling. And, though the acting by some of the locals left something to be desired, I thought the main characters did a very good job, especially considering the type of movie this was. The music score was terrific and gave the film some great moments. The photography was very good, and probably one of the best using low-light scenes with only candles. And the special effects hold up very well by today's standards.

O.K., I'll point out a few negatives. Some of the dialog is hilariously bad, and tends to stereotype "southerners". Of course, as with most of these types of films, the science doesn't hold up, but thats why its called "science FICTION".

In closing, I can highly recommend this movie to any fan of sci-fi-nature-strikes-back and horror movies. But please, watch it with an open mind- you'll enjoy it better.

Definitely not MST3K material.